Travelling south down the coast road from Montrose you pass through the sparsely productive localities of Auchmithie and Arbroath eventually arriving at the city of Dundee. Dundee occupies a large part of the northern side of the Tay estuary and is a long established industrial area. Agates can be found both to the east and west of the city and were also previously collected from quarries and other sites within the city boundaries. Modern development has now covered these over however and now beach deposits, for example at Broughty Ferry on the eastern outskirts, provide a meager supply of agates within the city limits.

In the early 1990s, and as a result of growing demand for stone aggregate, increased production at Ethiebeaton and Ardownie quarries to the northeast of Dundee let to two major new agate finds. Extensive lava flows containing exceptional specimens were uncovered. The agates from these localities are considered to be at least comparable in quality to those extracted a century earlier from the Blue Hole near Usan. I was lucky enough to be able, along with 3-4 other collectors, to collect from both these localities from about 1991 to about 1994 when operations at both quarries was to a certain extend scaled down.

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